SMS and Twitter

HappyTC lets you contact team mates using SMS for free* — using Twitter!

Here’s the scoop:

1.) Set up a Twitter account for your team on twitter.com. (You don’t need to enable a mobile device for the team account.)

2.) Sign in to HappyTC, click the Twitter button and provide the team Twitter account’s user ID and password.

3.) Tell your team mates to use their own personal Twitter accounts to “follow” the new team Twitter account.

4.) Tell them to enable “updates to mobile” when following the team account.

(They obviously need to add their mobile devices to their own Twitter accounts — they do this under Settings, on the “Devices” tab in Twitter.)

Now, whenever anyone contacts the team from within HappyTC there’s the option to “tweet” the message as well — which sends an SMS to all following players!

Other notes:

  • * There is no charge from either HappyTC or Twitter for using this feature; however, depending on mobile phone providers and plan, there may be a charge for incoming SMS messages
  • Twitter doesn’t offer SMS updates in all countries; currently Twitter appears to serve the following countries with SMS updates (see also Twitter’s latest list):
    • USA
    • UK (depending on mobile carrier)
    • Canada
    • India (depending on mobile carrier)
    • Indonesia (depending on mobile carrier)
    • Ireland (depending on mobile carrier)
    • Australia (depending on mobile carrier)
    • New Zealand (depending on mobile carrier)
  • If you don’t want your team’s account to be “followable” by the world, in Twitter go to “Settings”, “Account”, and tick the “Protect my tweets” checkbox. This will mean that you need to “approve” each player when they try to follow the team account (a bit more admin on your part).
  • Providing the Twitter password is a normal way for applications to integrate with Twitter. The Twitter password is saved in encrypted form at HappyTC, and is not viewed or shared by anyone. However, we recommend that you do not use an “important” password (e.g. the one you use for online banking, etc.)